Cardinals Fall Short in 2013 Series, but There's a Lot to Look Forward To

Now that the World Series is over and the Cardinals are finally done, I guess I can get back to writing about baseball. And what better way to get back into the swing of things than writing about the Series that just ended?

On one hand, this is a particularly rough way for my team go down. I had been particularly hoping the Cardinals won this one on behalf of Carlos Beltran. He’s been, by all accounts, an incredible and underrated star with a history of great postseason performances and disappointing endings. And by all accounts, he’s been a great guy, too; it’s hard not to feel miserable for him. I’m sorry we couldn’t get him a ring the way we did with Lance Berkman.

There are other reasons to feel frustrated about this series, too. Mike Matheny looked overmatched at times. The Cardinals were utterly deserted by the luck they had experienced with runners in scoring position during the regular season-St. Louis actually outhit the Red Sox 45 to 41 over the six games, despite being outscored 27 to 14. It’s not hard to imagine a title with only two or three more lucky breaks.

But, at the same time, there’s a lot to be excited for in the future. This team won 97 games this season, but there’s still reason to hope for improvement. First and foremost is the pitching; Adam Wainwright may or may not replicate his stellar year as the team’s ace, but there’s still plenty of depth around him. Shelby Miller, just 22 this season, burst out the gates, making a case for Rookie of the Year. Michael Wacha, who turned 22 in July, made a name for himself in September and October.

And then there’s Carlos Martinez (turned 22 in September) and set-up man-turned-closer Trevor Rosenthal (23), who will both hopefully get to show their stuff in the rotation (Jason Motte will be returning from surgery next year, meaning they should have enough depth to shift them). And that’s not even getting into Lance Lynn, Jaime Garcia, and Joe Kelly, all of whom will still be around.

There’s good things on offense, too. Matt Holliday, Yadier Molina, and Allen Craig will all be returning. Matt Carpenter had a breakout year at the top of the lineup, and can either stay at second or move to third if prospect Kolten Wong forces his way into the lineup. Matt Adams may become a regular force in the lineup, and the team also has top prospect Oscar Taveras in the wings.

There’s even more to be excited about for 2014. The team could always make a move from outside the organization. Beltran will be hard to replace, but the only other players who are free agents are Jake Westbrook (who looks to be the eighth or so starter on the depth chart), Edward Mujica (who was admittedly a good reliever for most of the season, but those are rather replaceable), Chris Carpenter, and Rafael Furcal (both of whom were injured the entirety of 2013).

All in all, those five represent over $40 million coming off the books, with only one part looking hard to replace. Granted, there will be player raises through arbitration and such, but that still leaves them with something in the neighborhood of $30 million to use as needed for whatever holes they can’t fill internally. It’s a lot of flexibility, especially for a team with as much of a long-term core in place.

It’s always tough to take a loss like this, when you were so close to the top. But it makes me feel better that there are so many reasons for Cardinals fans to be optimistic about 2014 and beyond.

Evaluating Postseason Performance, with Carlos Beltran, David Ortiz, and WAR

Many fans outside of New England and the Midwest may be upset with this year’s World Series match-up; no matter which team wins, the Red Sox and Cardinals will have combined for half of the past decade’s titles. One upside of it though is that the world gets a little bit more of two of the game’s greatest postseason hitters in Carlos Beltran and David Ortiz.

Beltran and Ortiz are both special for another reason; a majority of fans still see them as borderline Hall candidates in need of more October glory to stamp their eventual ticket to Cooperstown. Several writers this week have looked at the issue already. I would agree with Dave Cameron’s thinking that Beltran is already a Hall of Famer, but I wanted to look at it in another way.

Wins Above Replacement has taken off in the national consciousness as of late, and for good reason. Few stats can take as all-encompassing a look at on-field results and turn them into something easy to understand and compare. With the spread of the WAR framework, many people have gotten used to the scale it works on as well. For example, by Baseball-Reference’s version of the calculation, players start to get serious Hall consideration around 60 or so Wins and become locks around 70.

Beltran already has a solid case at 67.5, while Ortiz is a little lagging at only 44.2. However, those figures don’t account for their aforementioned post-season prowess. Is there a way we can add that in to the WAR framework?

2013 Baseball Bloggers Alliance Award Ballot

The postseason is a weird time for me. Despite all the baseball going on, I usually don’t write as much. Partly because watching games takes up a larger percentage of my time than it normally does, with multiple must-watch games on most days, but also partly because I really just don’t do reaction writing to individuals games. It just seems too reactionary to what is generally a pretty randomized tournament.

This isn’t to say that I don’t have anything planned about the play-offs, though, so be on the look-out in the next few days. However, until that’s ready, I’m getting a jump start on the offseason awards by posting my ballots for the Baseball Bloggers Alliance elections. In the coming weeks, I’ll be going in depth on each selection, but until then, I’m just making sure that my ballot gets in on time.

The All-Expansion World Series That Never Was: A Brief History of Expansion Teams in the Post-Season

Something interesting that I saw pointed out in an article the other day: the Rays were the only expansion team that made the playoffs (even counting that stupid Wild Card Round). Just think about that for a second; almost half the league (fourteen out of thirty, to be exact) is expansion teams, and a full third of the league makes the playoffs now (still stupid), but only one-tenth of the playoff teams were expansion teams. Or, to put it another way, over half of the original sixteen teams were in the playoffs.

On top of that, there has never been an all-expansion team World Series. That’s why, in the event that I don’t have a rooting interest remaining, playoff droughts and expansion teams generally get my sympathies in the postseason. It seems so small, yet ground-breaking.

In any case, what’s the closest baseball has ever gotten to an all-expansion World Series? And what are the prospects of it happening in the future? Let’s start with the first question.

Why I Hate the Wild Card Game

I feel like I've railed against the new one-and-done playoff round before, but this year is a perfect example of why I dislike it.

I know people love to say that the Wild Card is the "easy" way in to the playoffs, which is why it's okay for the top two Wild Card teams to fight for the spot. But look at the NL. This year, the 94-win Pirates and Francisco Liriano get one game to "prove" that they're better than Johnny Cueto and the 90-win Reds. How does that make any sense? Why does this one game mean so much more than the previous 162? Or the 19 other games the Reds faced the Pirates this year (of which the Pirates won 11)? One false slip (like, say, this) and that 4-win difference means nothing.

People always come back to that with "well, they should have won their division." That's still awful reasoning to justify an unfair system. Why do the Pirates' 94 wins (in a division with three playoff teams, one of whom had the best record in the NL, no less) count for less than the Dodgers' 92 (and in a division where the second best team went 81-81*)? Why is it the Pirates who have to justify their place in October? Why not have a one-game playoff between the Reds and Dodgers? Is it just because the Dodgers had the foresight to move west fifty-odd years ago?

*Although, strangely enough, the Dodgers actually carried a losing record against their NL West opponents.

This happened last year, too, when the 88-win Tigers (sixth-best record in the AL) snuck in through the weak AL Central while the 90+ win Orioles and Rangers had a one-game playoff (to be fair, since they had the same record, that would have happened in the old system too). But I think this one is an even better example of the ridiculousness of it, given that 1) one Wild Card team surpassed a division-winner; 2) the Wild Card teams play in the same division, so there's no "unbalanced schedule" argument; and 3) the race for top Wild Card wasn't particularly close. The only argument against actually having the two worst playoff teams play each other seems to be the divisions, a completely arbitrary assignment.

I probably shouldn't be as worked up about this. The World Series stopped being about crowning the best team in baseball long ago. But maybe the fact that so many people pretend it is is what annoys me. Or maybe it's just the awful logical reasonings that get thrown around to justify it, as if this is a better, more exciting, or more fair system than what existed before. It very clearly is not.

Appreciating Todd Helton and Andy Pettitte (and the Hall of Fame, of course)

Within the past week, both Andy Pettitte and Todd Helton made their retirements official. And as expected, people have turned to the Hall of Fame and where these two fit into the conversation. And of course, because I look for every excuse possible to write about the Hall, I may as well jump in with my take.

I’ve said this several times, but I err on the side of a larger Hall of Fame. So I see Todd Helton’s 55.8 career fWAR and 61.3 bWAR and see someone who’s nowhere near the worst choice for first basemen. For his career (as of right now, at least), he has 368 home runs (75th all-time) and 591 doubles (16th). His career batting line is .316/.414/.539 (average/OBP/slugging), making him one of twenty-three players in history with a .300/.400/.500 career batting line (over 3000 plate appearances*). His career OPS+ (which is park-adjusted, remember) is 133, right there with Hall of Famers like Al Kaline, Paul Waner, Orlando Cepeda, Al Simmons, Billy Williams, Joe Medwick, and Tony Gwynn. Granted, there are also non-Hall of Famers in that range, but it’s a good start at least.

*Fun fact: I first had the limit set to 1000 games when I searched this. The 1000 game cut-off includes reliever Roberto Hernandez, who appeared in 1010 games and went 1 for 2 with a single and a strike out over seventeen seasons, giving him a .500/.500/.500 line.

Retired Number Spin-Offs: Retired Number Rates Throughout the League, and Thoughts About Them

To celebrate the 300th post at Hot Corner Harbor, I’m taking a look at my favorite topic in a way that I’ve wanted to for a while now. One thing that I began wondering about a lot while working on the Retired Numbers Series was the rate that different teams retired numbers. For example, both the Astros and the Pirates had nine retired numbers, but those nines were not arrived at through similar means at all. So what does each team look like on a rate basis?

Well, that’s a tricky question. First of all, not every retired number is retired equally. Specifically, there are four that are a little different. When writing my series, I covered every retired number, but for the purpose of a study, I threw out a few. First of all, the (rather ridiculous, to be completely honest) 455 retired by the Cleveland Indians is gone. It really has no predictive value, and relatively little historical value (that’s no longer even the sell-out record).

Has Bryce Harper Been a Disappointment This Year?

I feel like I write about Bryce Harper a lot. At least he’s an interesting player to write about. Actually, that’s probably why I write about him so much. Anyway, today’s question: Has Bryce Harper been a disappointment this season?

I haven’t really seen many serious articles on this topic, which is really good (because it’s a dumb question). However, I feel like some fans are starting to have doubts about how good he is after this year. I’ve seen people point out a number of ways that he hasn’t “lived up to the hype” so far, though.

Again, it’s usually more from commenters than writers (I have long speculated I would be a happier person on the whole if I refrained from reading internet comments). But I’ve still seen the gamut of complaints, from people criticizing his selection to the All-Star Game (already his second, mind you) to “only” hitting .273 with 49 RBIs.

Retired Number Spin-Off: Going Where No Retired Numbers Have Gone Before, or Why Do Baseball Players Hate 8?

One cool thing about doing the Retired Number Series was all of the ideas for spin-offs I got. However, I wanted to wait until I finished the main series to work on those. Now that that’s out of the way, though, I can work on these side projects.

One thing that I always thought was interesting was the breadth of numbers worn. I remember seeing this chart from Flip Flop Fly Ball and thinking about teams needing triple digit numbers and all the numbers that would have to be out of use to get to them. And from there, I for some reason thought of how that span would look.

Basically, after doing 30 retired number pieces, you get to notice that some numbers show up more than others. In case you were wondering, 20 showed up more than any others, with nine occurrences.* In total, 51 useable numbers have been retired (this disqualifies Cleveland’s 455). They span from 1 (seven times) to 85 (once, Augie Busch). 72 was the highest one that was actually worn by a player (Carlton Fisk).

*Luis Gonzalez, Monte Irvin, Lou Brock, Pie Traynor, Mike Schmidt, Frank White, Don Sutton, and Frank Robinson twice

Seeing stuff like this made me wonder what the lowest unretired number was. When I began, it was 28. Since then, the Twins have honored Bert Blyleven. Apparently though, players don’t like the 8’s. The now-lowest unretired number is 38.

So what as-of-yet-unhonored numbers may someday join these illustrious ranks? Well, Baseball-Reference has introduced a cool tool (at least, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t around when I started). Clicking on a player’s jersey will take you to a list of all the players to wear a jersey in that team’s history (for example, see the Astros’ page). From there, you can navigate to each individual jersey’s page (again, see 20’s page for reference).

Now with a purpose, I investigated each number without a represented player to see what may eventually become the new lowest not-retired number.

Retired Numbers Series: Toronto Blue Jays

Just over two years ago, I started the Retired Numbers Series with the intent of taking a thorough examination at every team’s history and how their outlook for future ceremonies appeared. This is the culmination of those 26 months of effort; finally, we move north of the border to cover our last team, the only still-existent non-American team, the Toronto Blue Jays. One of the newer teams in the league, the Blue Jays have taken a somewhat unique approach to honoring former players, but have as of recently started to move in a more traditional direction. What does their future hold?

Retired Numbers Series: San Francisco Giants

As the Retired Number Series quickly draws closer to an end, we’re left with only two more teams to cover. But one of them is quite a big player in the retired-number-field. The San Francisco Giants are both the final National League team and the final original sixteen team I have left. With a history dating back to 1883, only two teams have honored as many players as the Giants. Will the future bring even more?


Notes on the Numbers
Some quick notes on the stats: the two most prominent stats I used are similarly named. Both are called WAR, or Wins Above Replacement. They both try to account for every part of a player’s game, including, but not limited to: offense, defense, position, and playing time. So, it is a counting stat, like hits or home runs (with the small difference that bad seasons can actually decrease your WAR, if you are worse than a replacement player). WAR credits a player with how many wins they have provided to their team. They aren’t perfect, but for my purposes (a single number showing roughly how good a player has been), they work perfectly.

There are two major sites that provide WAR, Baseball-Reference (henceforth called bWAR) and Fangraphs (fWAR). The two are mostly the same, with the biggest difference coming from the different fielding stats the two use. Fangraphs has a fairly good summary of what makes up WAR and how it is calculated (for those wanting a more general summary, the introduction works just fine). Pitching is slightly different: Fangraphs’ WAR for pitchers, until recently (as in, after I started this series), only went back to 1974, so for my purposes, I stuck to just bWAR for them.

Retired Numbers Series: Chicago White Sox

The White Sox are the final remaining original AL team that I need to cover in my Retired Numbers Series, and boy are they a lot to cover. They have retired the second most numbers of any AL team across their 113 year history. Does that sort of fast pace leave them with any near-future choices for retired numbers? Let’s find out.


Notes on the Numbers
Some quick notes on the stats: the two most prominent stats I used are similarly named. Both are called WAR, or Wins Above Replacement. They both try to account for every part of a player’s game, including, but not limited to: offense, defense, position, and playing time. So, it is a counting stat, like hits or home runs (with the small difference that bad seasons can actually decrease your WAR, if you are worse than a replacement player). WAR credits a player with how many wins they have provided to their team. They aren’t perfect, but for my purposes (a single number showing roughly how good a player has been), they work perfectly.

There are two major sites that provide WAR, Baseball-Reference (henceforth called bWAR) and Fangraphs (fWAR). The two are mostly the same, with the biggest difference coming from the different fielding stats the two use. Fangraphs has a fairly good summary of what makes up WAR and how it is calculated (for those wanting a more general summary, the introduction works just fine). Pitching is slightly different: Fangraphs’ WAR for pitchers, until recently (as in, after I started this series), only went back to 1974, so for my purposes, I stuck to just bWAR for them.

MLB Finally Decides to Increase Instant Replay and Immediately Fails At It

Well, this is both great and awful. 

In a move emblematic of Bud Selig’s tenure as Commissioner, he stared down an obvious major problem without acting for exponentially longer than was needed to before swiftly jumping in at the last minute with a horrendously sub-optimal solution that was apparently made without any outside feedback in order to cover his legacy on his way out. Just like with steroids. Or expansion. Or the extra wild card. Or the draft. Or collusion. Or the All-Star Game. Or the Expos. Or the Athletics and Rays stadium situations. Or…

Why is it the managers’ jobs to make sure the plays are called correctly? Would it have been that hard to just stick a fifth umpire in the booth with a live feed so he can notify the field umps when replays show a call is clearly missed? Heck, they could have managed that system with pagers, since the man is so adverse to modern technology. I mean, we clearly have the ability to get the calls right. Before the system in place just ignored a solution to consistently apply a method (human umps miss calls, but all calls are in theory coming from the same set, even if each ump is different). Now, you’re introducing something that can easily standardize the officiating to make sure every call is correct…but you’re going to artificially limit it so that only some of the easily-fixable calls are fixed. What’s the point? And why introduce it specifically for the stretch-run and playoffs without any prior testing to see if this system needs any improvement? (hint: it needs a lot of improvement)

In retrospect, I’m not sure why I had my hopes up for the obvious, easy solution. It's great that MLB baseball is finally, after so many years, addressing their ability to improve officiating. I just wish they would go about it in a way that made sense.

EDIT: I've only seen rumors about it being implemented this season, so they may wait on that. Which is good, I guess.

They've compensated for that by making a needlessly-complicated, ridiculous process for entirely the wrong reasons. Which is less good.

PEDs and Lifetime Bans

I've already commented on Biogenesis stuff, so I'll keep this brief. This latest round of suspensions has brought about new calls for tougher punishments and comparisons to gambling's lifetime ban. I've been wanting to write my thoughts on this for some time, and I finally did in response to Grant Brisbee's piece over at Baseball Nation. For convenience, I'm reposting it here.

With gambling, the motive is unclear. But I would imagine it’s much easier to lose on purpose than win on purpose, making "lose on purpose" the more likely outcome-baseball is already a game with a lot of failure, and having 1/9 of your chances to actually succeed give up can be devastating to your chances. That’s not to say that players would only bet on themselves to lose, but it’s an option. If one side were trying to lose, it would be a scripted event, not a sport, and therefore, not baseball. 

With steroids, there’s a very clear motive: play better. That doesn’t challenge the integrity of the event occurring nearly as much; it’s still a competition, at least. 

And really, how is that motive any different than those for scuffing a ball, or corking a bat, or taking amphetamines, or any other number of things players have done? And yet, no one is calling for a lifetime ban for any of those. Why? You can say it’s due to how successful it is, as that doesn’t change the intent. We charge murder the same, whether it’s committed with a knife or a spoon (apologies for jumping to murder as a comparison, but I like that video). 

And really, that’s the other problem. Baseball has never tried to figure out what exactly steroids did. Let’s talk hypothetical-maybe they turn out to be as effective as a corked bat. The last two players suspended for bat corking got eight game suspensions. Steroids already get 50. Most independent studies are struggling to even prove that steroids do what we think they do. You can point to the home runs by Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa as proof, but at the same time, I can point to Neifi Perez or Freddy Galvis or Francisco Cervelli or the dozens of minor leaguers who have tested positive. And at the same time, amphetamines and other stimulants only draw a 25 game ban, and we have links from everyone from Willie Mays to Mickey Mantle to Hank Aaron taking those. A handful of anecdotes aren’t proof of anything. Do steroids help? Maybe. Are they two times worse than amphetamines? Maybe, although it’s even less clear. Are they infinitely worse to justify a lifetime ban? That seems like quite a leap. 

Maybe if people began calling for all forms of cheating to automatically draw lifetime bans, I could see it, but that seems both unlikely and overly-harsh.

Thoughts on Biogenesis and PED-Users Becoming All-Stars

In case you haven’t heard, the big news in baseball this week is the Biogenesis suspensions. After investigating the Florida-based clinic, MLB came up with a list of fourteen players to suspend, plus a few other names cleared.

Ryan Braun was suspended a few weeks ago. Monday saw the suspensions of Nelson Cruz, Jhonny Peralta, Everth Cabrera, Antonio Bastardo, Jesus Montero, Francisco Cervelli, Jordany Valdespin, Fautino De Los Santos, Jordan Norberto, Cesar Puello, Fernando Martinez, and Sergio Escalona. In addition to those thirteen, Alex Rodriguez is appealing his own suspension (which, for some reason, is three to four times harsher than every other player involved, but that’s another can of worms), while Melky Cabrera, Bartolo Colon, and Yasmani Grandal were all cleared of additional wrongdoing (all three were given suspensions last year).

Everyone likes to focus on Rodriguez and Braun, as they are the biggest names involved. Even Cruz and Peralta are drawing attention, thanks to playing key roles on pennant teams. However, I think the other names on the list are what make it interesting.

I’m going to be honest, there were players on this list that I have never heard of, and I consider myself a passionate baseball fan. I just somehow had never come across Jordan Norberto, Sergio Escalona, or Cesar Puello until their names turned up. That made me think, though.